The Welfare Dimensions Summary Scores (WDSS) project provides quantitative evidence on welfare policies across all states and the District of Columbia from 1996 through 2003, or immediately following a redesign of United States welfare policy that freed states to create public assistance contexts specific to their own economic environments. The purpose of this study is to categorize textual welfare policy guidelines into dimensions and quantified scores across states throughout the post welfare reform implementation period. The data is composed of measures based upon the Urban Institute's Welfare Rules Database (WRD), which provides a longitudinal textual account of the changes in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) rules in all 50 states and the District of Columbia for the 1996 to 2003 period. Specifically, the researchers used the WRD database to code individual welfare rule items for each state during the study time period, eventually producing 18 welfare policy dimensions. These scores range from negative (the lowest indicating greatest leniency) to positive (the highest indicating greatest stringency) values. These quantitative measures can serve to measure the variation across states, and changes over time, in welfare policy guidelines from 1996 through 2003.

The Welfare Dimensions Summary Scores (WDSS) project provides quantitative evidence on welfare policies across all states and the District of Columbia from 1996 through 2003, or immediately following a redesign of United States welfare policy that freed states to create public assistance contexts specific to their own economic environments. The purpose of this study is to categorize textual welfare policy guidelines into dimensions and quantified scores across states throughout the post welfare reform implementation period. The data is composed of measures based upon the Urban Institute's Welfare Rules Database (WRD), which provides a longitudinal textual account of the changes in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) rules in all 50 states and the District of Columbia for the 1996 to 2003 period. Specifically, the researchers used the WRD database to code individual welfare rule items for each state during the study time period, eventually producing 18 welfare policy dimensions. These scores range from negative (the lowest indicating greatest leniency) to positive (the highest indicating greatest stringency) values. These quantitative measures can serve to measure the variation across states, and changes over time, in welfare policy guidelines from 1996 through 2003.